THULAMAHASHE – The provincial office of the department of public works, roads and transport has denied any knowledge of assault claims made by interview candidates last week.

This was after a group of candidates waiting to be interviewed for a learnership programme intake at the department said they had to run for their lives after they were attacked by staff on Tuesday morning.

According to one of the candidates, Mr Themba Nkosi, who travelled from Gauteng for the interview, while they were waiting to be called inside, the angry employees started hurling insults at them and beating them with chairs.

“They accused us of coming from wherever to steal jobs from their unemployed children who are local and entitled to the jobs,” Nkosi said.

He added that after a short meeting between the employees and the department’s management they were sent home without being interviewed.

“They just said we must go home and they would phone us to tell us what the way forward will be. To think that I travelled all the way and spent money on this! It is really unacceptable!” said the angry Nkosi.

Spokesperson for the department,Mr Rodney Madalane stated that the department had not received any report or complaints from any candidates who were assaulted at the offices in Thulamahashe.

“Any candidate who claims to have been assaulted in any way is advised to report the matter to the nearest police station,” Madalane added.

However, a number of the employees at the Thulamahashe offices confirmed that they had stopped the interview process by deniying the candidates access to the building.

“We did not necessarily assault them but refused them entry into the premises.What made us angry is that this learnership programme had not been advertised and now people from Nelspruit and other places are brought to our own region without any local candidates.

First it was traffic officers brought by a bus to our offices when there was no advertisement of those posts.

We are tired of such and we have our brothers and sisters locally who are not employed and need jobs desperately,” said an employee of the department.